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Blogs > What you need to consider before you start building your garden room

What you need to consider before you start building your garden room

Once you've decided to go ahead with installing a garden room for your family, the temptation is to run ahead with the fun things; to start looking up wallpaper patterns, floor coverings and soft furnishings. If you're including a kitchenette, you may be looking at cabinet colours, or any lamps and appliances that you're going to need.

Long before this, however, there are a number of serious considerations to make sure that you get a garden room that is both versatile and valuable to you because it's been carefully designed for your needs.

Firstly, there's the footprint of the space – if you have a very large, square garden this may not be a concern but if your garden is particularly long or thin – or even has odd quirks such as being L or T-shaped – you could use these in your designer's plans to make the most of your available space. You don't necessarily want to give over too much of your garden and lose outdoor space, but you need to make use of what you have available. Similarly, you may not have considered the height of your room, but some local 'permitted development' rules mean that structures under a certain height don't require any planning permission.

The highly insulated walls of Garden Spaces rooms mean that they remain a comfortable and usable space throughout the year, but you may not have considered how light may affect your garden space. If you have a garden that faces east or west, how will you make the most of natural light? Adding in large glass doors is one way, but you could also add in a number of extra windows to allow the largest amount of light to enter. An option you may not have considered may be suntubes in the roof, which take light hitting the roof and refract it down tubes to light the room underneath it. If you prefer to see the sky, you could install skylights to both illuminate the room and provide a pleasant view.

Another consideration is the ability to extend amenities such as electricity and water out to the garden room. If you'd like an 'off-grid' approach, say as a study or reading room, then you need no further concern but for those who'd like all-mod-cons, you need to plan how you'll connect your household power and water supplies to the new garden structure.

By taking care and properly considering the first steps of your garden room design, you have the ability to make the space even more valuable to you and your family, simply because the choices you've made increase how effectively it can serve your needs. Making it work for you in terms of size, shape, light and the equipment and amenities you have available can greatly increase how vital your garden room becomes for you.